The Third Way and the Jammed Economy

Abstract

LIKE PLANNING IN THE 1930s or New Liberalism in the 1910s, ‘The Third Way’ is now being offered as a new political problematic with the potential to reconstruct problems and define new solutions which previously eluded Labour and old social democracy. In response, this polemic questions the Third Way's analysis and policy prescriptions in the area of the economy. The first section presents an analysis of how the economy is represented and conceptualised in Blair's Fabian Society pamphlet and Giddens’ recent book, both titled ‘The Third Way’. Although there are clear differences between Blair's and Gidden's vision of the Third Way and how to get there, for the purposes of our interest in economic management the overlap is sufficient to consider them together. The first section of the paper concludes with a consideration of the practice of Blair's New Labour Government in the crucial area of economic management before, in the second section, presenting an alternative conception of our economic problems.